Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Go Set a Watchman

Go Set a Watchman
was crowned Book of the Year months before it was finally published in
mid-July.And as regards book publicity,
both positive and negative, it certainly deserves that title, and could easily
be dubbed Book of the Decade with little argument from either the book’s
supporters or its detractors.

Watchman has split
the book community almost right down the middle.For every reader who waited anxiously for the
book to become available, there seems to be a reader who had already declared
no interest in reading it – at least until all the hoopla died down.Some worry that Harper Lee has been
hoodwinked into allowing what was really just a rejected manuscript into being
published at all.A few even go so far
as to doubt that she is even aware that the book has been published.Others, once they began to hear rumors that
Lee exposes the much beloved Atticus Finch’s racism in Watchman, declared that they would never read it because they did not want the Atticus character from To Kill a Mockingbird to be tainted in
their minds.

I tended to be in the “wait and see” camp myself, but I
decided to drive from Houston to Monroeville, Alabama (Lee’s hometown and
residence) so that I could witness firsthand the festivities planned there for
the book’s unveiling.What I saw in
Monroeville, and the conversations I had with the locals, leads me to believe
that Lee is fully aware of what is happening with Watchman.Not one time did I
hear anyone express any doubt at all about that and, in fact, the town
celebrated the book and its author with great pride during the two days I was there.And, because I could not resist buying a copy
of Watchman in the gift shop of the old
Monroeville courthouse, my reading plan as regards the book changed – and I
finished it before I made it back to Houston.

Go Set a Watchman
is certainly not nearly as polished as To
Kill a Mockingbird.I found the
book’s first hundred pages (in which Lee sets up the premise for what is to
follow) to be slow reading and was beginning to grow bored with what Watchman appeared to be.But then things got interesting.

Jean Louise Finch, otherwise known as “Scout,” is the
twenty-six-year-old narrator of Watchman.She is in Maycomb, Alabama, on a rare visit
home from New York to what remains of her family there.The country is in the midst of the Civil
Rights Movement, a time of tension and turbulence in much of the South, and
Jean Louise is finding it difficult to reconcile her childhood memories to what
seems to be happening in Maycomb.When
she finds that those to whom she is the closest, including both her father and
the man she is engaged to marry, are secretly involved with the most blatant
racists in the county to keep Negros “in their place,” she is ready to leave
Maycomb and her family behind forever.

Harper Lee Book Jacket Photo

In the end, Go Set a
Watchman is a realistic look into the mindset of white Southerners of the
time, men and women who feared destruction of the only way of life they had
ever known.Good men, as well as evil
men, were caught up in the struggle for full racial equality that was happening
all around them.It was largely a matter
of degree, and Atticus Finch, a good man was, after all, nothing but a man of
his times.

Go Set a Watchman
is not a great book, but it is one that will have people talking about it for a
long time.Those worried about Atticus
Finch’s “image” need only remember that Mockingbird
is told through the eyes of a child and Watchman
through the eyes of that now-adult child.Atticus may not be the saint from Mockingbird,
but he is still a good man trying to do what he believes to be the right thing.

Trav, the title page of the book is embossed with the courthouse seal so that does make it kind of special, I think. I have another post or two in mind from the trip...just need to get them put together.

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